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U2 'Invisible' by Mark Romanek

David Knight - 12th Feb 2014

With the new U2 song Invisible being available for free on Sunday February 2nd to benefit [RED] – and receiving over 3 million downloads globally raising more than $3 million in donations from Bank of America – a 60 second clip of the video appeared in an ad break during Sunday's Superbowl.

Now the video has been released in full today. Directed by Mark Romanek, it's a performance video but it's also technically groundbreaking, thanks to the ingenuity of British creative studio Marshmallow Laser Feast (or MLF), who designed a real-time visual system that captured and analysed U2’s movements as they performed on a stage, allowing the band to generate visuals interactively on a giant LED screen behind them.

MLF - Memo Akten, Robin McNicholas, Barney Steel –  worked with Juliette Larthe and Mark Logue of PRETTYBIRD to realise their concept, which was to create an interactive 3D lighting and video architecture that directly translated the band and audience’s movement into striking video and lighting output.  Then the video was directed by Mark Romanek - utilising world class LD Patrick Dierson – and shot over three days in a hangar in Santa Monica with 1,000 extras. 

“Cameras track the movement of the band and audience and feed that information into the Punkalator, an application developed specifically for this project by MLF,” explains MLF director Robin McNicholas. “This then interfaces with a Green Hippo Media Server and works in sync with Protools and a GrandMA lighting console.”

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David Knight - 12th Feb 2014

Tags

  • Charity appeal
  • Performance
  • Promos
  • Rock

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Credits

Production/Creative

Director
Mark Romanek
Producer
Aris MacGarry
Producer
Juliette Larthe
Production Company
Production Company
1st AD
David Dean

Camera

Director of Photography
Philippe Le Sourd

Lighting/Grip

Gaffer
Bill Silic
Grip
Johnny London, Jr.

Other credits

STAGING & EQUIPMENT & TECHNICAL SUPPLY

ARE Production

Producer

Antony Randall

PRETTYBIRDUK:

LIGHTING & INTERACTIVE CONCEPT & LIVE/REAL TIME DESIGN

Marshmallow Laser Feast AKA Barney Steel, Memo Akten, Robin McNicholas

Producer & Exec Producer

Juliette Larthe

Exec Producer

Derek Richmond

Head of Production

Margo Mars

Line Producer

Mark Logue

Production Assistant

Ciara Mc Gowan

Production Co-ordinator

Lana Salfiti:

Software Developer

Marek Bereza

Animator

James Francis

Animator

James Medcraft

Animator

Ersin Han Ersin

Animator

Chris Thompson

Animator

Cai Mathews

Content Editor

Mike Harrison

Pre-Vis Artist

Young Eun Kim

Media Server Consultant

John Montague

Lighting Consultant

Jonny Milmer

MA programming WYSIWYG

Adam Power

MA programmer

Patrick Dierson

Media server programmer

Loren Barton

POST-PRODUCTION:

Editor

Geoff Hounsell

Editing Company

Arcade Edit

David Knight - 12th Feb 2014

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